Bluemerle

Via the Richmond Times-Dispatch ( Online link not yet available, will update later. My comments follow the article text.)

Murder, grief and mystery
Police say scene left some people crying

BY JIM NOLAN AND BILL MCKELWAY
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITERS Jan 3, 2006


MEMORIALS
TODAY: Service at First Unitarian Universalist Church near Byrd Park at 5:30 p.m.

TOMORROW: Candlelight vigil at 7 p.m. at West 31st and Chesterfield streets.

RELATED: Police Beat

Police aren't saying whether they are any closer to solving the brutal New Year's Day murders of a popular Richmond family.

They have stopped short of even publicly stating whether the Woodland Heights community remains in danger.

But investigators indicated yesterday that they are narrowing the timeline of how the murders likely occurred. They have interviewed friends and neighbors who visited the home of Bryan and Kathryn Harvey in the hours before they and their two children were found murdered in their West 31st Street basement.

It was after 10 a.m. on New Year's Day when a Woodland Heights neighbor and her daughter arrived at the home.

They were dropping off the Harveys' elder daughter, Stella, who had spent the night in another part of the city with friends from Fox Elementary School.

As they stepped inside, Stella ran ahead and went down to the Harveys' basement family room.

The mother and daughter were met inside the house by Kathryn Harvey, who had just come upstairs.

According to investigators, she looked ashen and appeared nervous.

The woman asked whether Harvey was OK. She replied that she didn't feel well and might be getting sick.

Not wanting to intrude, the mother and her daughter said goodbye and left, not realizing they may have been the last people outside the home to see Kathryn and Stella Harvey alive.
[emphasis mine - SW.]

Less than four hours later, at 1:46 p.m., firefighters responding to a 911 call of a blaze at the home looked in the basement and found the bodies of Bryan Harvey, 49, Kathryn Harvey, 39, and their daughters, Stella, 9, and Ruby, 4. All had been murdered -- bound with tape and their throats cut.

A fire had been set in the basement, producing a heavy smoke that was discovered by Harvey family friend Johnny Hott when he arrived about 1:40 with his daughter to help the Harveys prepare for a 2 p.m. New Year's Day cookout.

The names of the woman and daughter, who could not be reached for comment, are being withheld by The Times-Dispatch.

"She's devastated," said an investigator close to the case.

Her account to police on Sunday has enabled them to narrow down the time of the slayings, but police yesterday were still boiling down dozens of leads in the search for a killer.

Investigators told The Times-Dispatch that the house did not appear to be ransacked and that there did not appear to be anything obvious that was missing from the home.


Homicide investigators yesterday continued their round-the-clock investigation of the quadruple murders, part of a six-homicide Sunday believed to be the deadliest day in Richmond in at least 10 years.

They combed through the two-story brick home on West 31st Street in South Richmond's Woodland Heights neighborhood, removing boxes of items. One of the Virginia State Police investigators called in to assist is trained in profiling killers.

While details of the crime scene have not been publicly discussed by authorities, one detective said yesterday that the condition of the bodies and the wounds "left some of our people crying."

A seasoned veteran of police work, he said the crime scene was the worst he has ever seen.

"You always try and focus on the mission, but there is just no way you can't just stop for a minute and think about how horrible this is," the detective said.

Likewise, across the city, friends, family, classmates and acquaintances of the Harveys and their children tried to process the slayings of a well-known, and loved, family:

Bryan Harvey was a talented Richmond musician who had just played a New Year's Eve gig with his band, NrG Krysys.

Kathryn was a fun-loving and successful Carytown businesswoman and co-owner of the World of Mirth. When she was pregnant with Ruby, she once decorated her belly as a jack-o'-lantern for Halloween.

Stella was a precocious third-grader at Fox Elementary, and Ruby was a preschooler.

"Everyone I know knows the community has lost four wonderful people," said Manny Mendez, 43, a longtime friend of Bryan and Kathy Harvey who owns the popular restaurant Kuba Kuba.

"They were perfect. There was not a bad bone in their body," added Mendez, who was invited to the Harveys' New Year's Day chili party but had other plans.

"How is it that the sweetest people in the world have something heinous happen to them?"

The question was a source of concern, not only for detectives investigating quadruple murders, but also for the Harveys' neighbors and tight-knit group of friends and family.

By noon yesterday, bouquets of flowers began to pile up beside a tree near yellow police tape surrounding the corner house.

In the hours after the bodies were discovered Sunday, chatter on a neighborhood Web site was circumspect and full of warnings about jumping to conclusions. But it was clear, also, that some people are very frightened.

"I am going to try to find comfort in the thought that I have such wonderful neighbors who look out for each other and are going to be [as] concerned and paranoid as I am," one message read

Three families said yesterday that police detectives have told them they need not be alarmed about a continuing threat in the neighborhood.

"One of the detectives came to me and said, 'There's no need to worry,'" said one neighbor, who has a wife and two children.

The resident might not have been totally convinced. Like representatives of two other families, he asked that his name not be used.

Police Chief Rodney Monroe said investigators are following leads but that the case is "too open to start speculating on any particular issue."

Asked about the brutal nature of the crime, Monroe said, "We don't want to read a lot into anything until we get our forensics back."

He said detectives continue to interview family, friends and acquaintances of the Harveys in their search for clues and are still seeking to talk with relatives who live outside the Richmond area.

While detectives work to solve the crime, friends of the Harveys are left to mourn.

"They meant so much," Manny Mendez said, "to so many people."


Contact staff writer Jim Nolan at jnolan@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6061.
Contact staff writer Bill McKelway at bmckelway@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6601.
Staff writer Michael Martz contributed to this report.

....
New information of note -
1.The fire was set in the basement.

2.In hindsight it appears that the killer well may have been present in the house when Stella arrived...something was wrong with Kathryn. Was the killer in the house when Kathryn greeted her daughter? If the killer was a stranger, how could Kathryn have remained silent and neglected to ask for help; and how could she let her nine-year-old daughter down the stairs?

3. Why did police detectives tell neighbors them they need not be alarmed about a continuing threat in the neighborhood?

Update: This Myrtle Beach Online story adds a disturbing detail not included in the Times-dispatch story.

"The woman (who dropped Stella off) thought she noticed marks on Kathy's wrist," a source told the New York Daily News.